The Ghost of Christmas Past
by sagredo
Summary: Fills from an old holiday-themed prompt table. Ch. 5: 'Twas the night before Christmas...and someone hadn't done his shopping yet.
1. Chapter 1

The unstoppable force, I thought, had met an immovable object.

"Mr. Holmes, I will not hear of you missing another meal in this house, expecially when that meal is _C__hristmas dinner_!"

"I am afraid you _will_ hear of precisely that, Mrs. Hudson, as my presence is required elsewhere."

I was observing the two combatants from my place at the table, torn between spectating as they answered one another, volley for volley, and contemplating what exactly had motivated our landlady's choice of dishes this year. That the table was laid with a bizarre variety of foodstuffs was indisputable. I had never seen kippers and eggs served at a christmas dinner before, nor curried fowl. The absence of any kind of vegetable was also notable. Crowning the vast spread was a bowl of artfully arranged tart green apples, which I would have been hard-pressed to designate as either dish or center piece. If there was any common thread to tie the meal together, I admit I was struggling to disentangle it.

"Mrs. hudson, I have a _case_!" Holmes complained, clearly at the end of his patience as his voice had risen at last, yanking my attention back to the combatants.

"Your case concerns a _banking fraud_," our landlady replied. "It will certainly keep for an hour or so while you eat."

"An hour -!" he clamped down on this protest firmly between his teeth, ostensibly making an effort to master his temper. I, who knew him well, however, could see that he was in fact considering whether to reign it in like a gentleman _or _do what he really wished, and unleash it entirely. I could also see the moment he must have thought to himself: _Sod it - it's Christmas_.

"This _isn't even_ Christmas dinner!" he cried, turning to gesture expansively at the table. "There is toast on this table! And cake as well as pudding?! But not a vegetable in sight. Watson must be beside himself. It's quite rich of you to demand I stay for Christmas dinner, Mrs. Hudson, when you appear to have prepared whatever came to your mind, without any regard for the season. Was there not a goose left in London?"

"You hate goose," the lady demured, "and hardley ever eat a bite."

"Oh!" crowed Holmes. "Is that what you've schemed up? You've dispensed with traditional Christmas fare on a whim and instead -" It was amazing to me to see how quickly the vitriol bled from his countenance, leaving him looking rather silly with one hand raised in oratorial fashion and an expression of deepest chargrin, " - made...all the things...I like."

Mrs. Hudson smiled blandly.

_Of course!_ I thought, the puzzle pieces falling into place at last.

There was only one way, now, for Holmes to extricate himself from the conflict with any grace.

Looking thoroughly chastised, and without uttering another word, he sat down at the table, and meekly reached for an apple.

* * *

_Prompt: Mrs. Hudson gets creative trying to prepare a christmas dinner which Holmes, who is in the middle of a case, will be tempted into eating. What does she make? Is it successful? _


	2. Chapter 2

I had, for the most part, fallen back into old patterns, and it was as though Watson had only for a brief time disrupted them. I had wondered at first how things would be following his departure from our rooms at 221. He himself did not percieve how singular an epoch his tenure there represented in the span of my life. But, as ever, I was good at being alone, and my work suffered not at all for his absence. If anything, I was able to devote to it once again that measure of focus which had been previously diluted by the presence of a companion.

In honesty I was surprised to hear from him again.

I had been absorbed in some demanding chemical research such that I actually had to think for a moment about who's tread I was hearing on the stairs before I recognized it. I felt my eyes widen. I put down the retort in my hands, wiped them on a cloth, and when I'd turned around, Watson was standing in the sitting room.

He looked different. He had gained a stone, was wearing a new grey suit, and carrying a stick I'd never seen before. His practice was doing well. His marriage was a happy one.

"You've kept it the same," he remarked, nodding, I suppose, to the arrangement of the furniture. "The book shelf looks rather empty, though." He said this with his old, half-taunting smile, as though we hadn't been strangers for some months.

I confess that I stared at him for a moment in confusion. "Did the movers leave something?"

He chuckled. "No, no. My dear Holmes, it's Christmas eve."

"What?" I groped out of habit for my watch, only to be reminded that I was dressed in shirtsleeves.

Watson's grin softened a bit, tinged with sympathy. That rankled. "Didn't you know?"

"Of course," I snapped. "I've only -" I gestured at the deal table behind me. "I've been working."

"You seem to be pretty hard at it," he considered.

"Yes, I'm afraid you find me otherwise occupied."

The grin became a frown. He looked disappointed. I suddenly felt I had misspoken.

"Well - I thought I would stop in for a moment to wish you the compliments of the season." He looked down and began pulling on a pair of gloves.

It was not often that I found myself at a loss for what to do, but Watson, as ever, was a harbinger of new experiences. I felt that if I let him leave I should lose something. At the same time, he had made his exit already - months ago.

"Perhaps, later in the week...?" he surprised me again by suggesting, glancing up, the grin playing about the edges of his mouth hopefully. "If your work is concluded by then, I could call -"

"Why?" I blurted. "I mean - why now?"

He blinked for a moment as though trying to work out what I meant by this question. "Well, it's Christmas," he settled on at last, smiling.

I wanted to tell him to get out.

"I'll let you know," I replied instead, and turned back to the deal table.

There was silence in the room behind me for a moment while I set about re-lighting a flagging spirit lamp. I cursed internally, measuring the temperature the solution in the flask above it had fallen to and marking this down in my notebook. If this run did not produce the desired result, I thought, the experiment would need to be repeated.

My attention was drawn away for a moment by the sound of a door closing.

I did not allow myself to dwell on it.

* * *

_Prompt: How does the first christmas during Watson's marriage proceed? What does Holmes do?_


	3. Chapter 3

Finding a Christmas gift for the Professor is not difficult. We have never officially made it a tradition, in all the years we've been associates - but, I won't deny, I know which side my bread is buttered on - and it's really no trouble at all.

In the first place, no matter how James actually makes his living, he's a mathematician at his core. The way to his heart is simple enough: a blank notebook or a new box of chalk does the trick (not to mention that when he is lacking such accoutrements, he can become pretty disagreeable).

Secondly, I won't deny being an opportunist, either - and if James is stocked up on paper and chalk, you can be sure that his mind will eventually wander to food.

He will never hear me say so, but he's not a large man. In fact, he's a deceptively small one. And yet he can eat as much as a regiment (and will, if given the opportunity). Not to say that he has a discriminating palate. Only the dimensions and active nature of a humming bird, and the metabolism to match. I wouldn't be surprised to learn he eats his weight in the course of a day. It's difficult to say where he puts it all. I imagine a great deal gets burned up powering that brain.

At any rate, if I should find myself with neither blank notebooks nor chalk ready to hand (my hands are often full with other matters - even at Christmas) all I need do is wait until a few hours after breakfast and ask if he'd like a sandwich.

This year I bought him one from the cafe at London Bridge station.

"Merry Christmas," I told him gruffly.

He grinned, all teeth. "I know you mean it, so don't pretend."

Never mind that he returned the favor by folding the waxed paper it came in into a vague snowflake shape and passing it back to me.

I did find my salary supplemented by a tidy bonus come New Years'.

* * *

_Prompt: Professor Moriarty and Colonel Moran purchase christmas gifts for one another. Are they macabre or innocuous?_


	4. Chapter 4

"Do you remember the first Christmas after my marriage?"

Holmes, stretched out on the dusty floorboards and engaged until that moment in minute scrutiny of a grimy foottrack, glanced up at me with a mutely perturbed expression.

I gestured listlessly. "It's only that -"

"This is another first amongst Christmases," he replied, turning back to his task, "I know."

I watched him in indecision for a moment. I had never properly spoken with him about that particular holiday season, though I had long harbored a sense of guilt for the hurt I eventually percieved I had done him. I had, to my regret, given him the most woefully inaccurate impression of where our association was to stand in the wake of my taking a wife. It had occured to me over the ensuing years that my error might have lain in assuming Holmes would simply read into my neglect of him the reasons which I had never made explicit. What, after all, could a man who was by his own admission otherwise friendless have done but take this at face value?

He had reached into his pocket for his pen knife and was scraping a bit of the mud from the track into an envelope by the time I thought I had dredged up anything useful to say.

"Did you keep Christmas?" I prodded. "While you were...travelling?"

I regretted the question almost immediately. Holmes' whole frame tensed in annoyance at being interrupted again, and as a means to continuing the discussion it was clumsy and forced. I had been wrestling since his return to London for a way to express what the loss of him three years earlier had meant to me, and that if I had ever allowed him to doubt the regard I held him in I wished to do so no longer. The thought that I had once all but lost my dear friend over a misunderstanding, trifling in light of what I had believed to be his death, turned my stomach. And, after all that time, when I chose to broach the subject I had come up with only the most tangential of querries.

I was surprised, however, when Holmes glanced up at me again without a trace of annoyance on his features, but his own look of guilt and discomfiture. He rose to his feet slowly, sighing and tucking the envelope and pen knife back into his pocket.

"Yes, I did - after a fashion," he replied, with an awkward twitch of a shrug. "No holly and garlands, or anything like that, of course...but I suppose I did mark the season."

This tugged at my curiosity. "What did you do?"

"I thought of you," he muttered quickly, attention suddenly diverted to picking at a bit of dirt that had attached itself to one of his gloves. "I wondered what you were doing. We ought, by rights, Watson, to forget the Christmas after your wedding and discuss the first Christmas after I - after Meirengen..." He trailed off, clearing his throat, and began fumbling amongst his coat pockets for his cigarette case.

I could but answer truthfully. "There's not much to tell."

Holmes paused in his search, glancing back to me with a look that teetered on the edge of guilt again.

"Really, Holmes it was...Well, this is not to say I didn't grieve...But it was the last Christmass Mary and I shared before she fell ill." I did not add that because I had grieved, I had relied on her more than ever during that holiday season, and she had become all the more dear to me for it. "It was very simple - an ostentatious celebration wouldn't have been right, with one of us mourning - but, we were together. And I am grateful for the time we had. I choose to remember it for that."

I worried for an instant that he would resent this confession, and see it as yet another way that my marriage had edged him out of my life. But, he surprised me once again when a smile of relief flickered briefly, almost shyly, over his features. "Then we need not tarnish the memory by discussing it." He sighed again, and seemed to shake himself as though shedding the tension and bad feeling our conversation had dredged up. Finally, he darted a last, keen-eyed glance around the room. "Well - this case is quite trivial."

"Fair enough," I agreed, equally happy to move on to brighter topics. "It's just as well we'll be able to spend your first Christmas back in London _celebrating_, rather than chasing a murderer about."

Holmes frowned as though he couldn't divine why I would say such a thing. "No. That is the opposite of what I should call 'just as well.'"

"Let's go and buy some of that holly and garland you've been missing," I went on.

"Watson -" he complained.

But, as I looped an arm through his to usher him out of the bleak, dusty house and into the clear december air, I couldn't help but be glad for this return to old patterns.

It seemed, at last, that things between us were being put to rights.

* * *

_Prompt: Write about the first Christmas after Holmes has 'died' at Reichenbach falls. What does Watson do?_


	5. Chapter 5

'Twas the day before christmas

And all through the city,

Not one crim'nal was stiring.

'Twas really a pity.

* * *

With holly and garland

all over the place,

I was starting to wish for my

Morocco case.

* * *

When who from the hall should presume to intrude,

Bringing with her a draft and a tray full of food,

Dashing all hope of sustained solitude,

But dear Mrs. Hudson - and a thing from a wood.

Namely, a tree. This boded no good.

* * *

"Mrs. Hudson, your wellmeaning's quite undersood,"

I remarked as she set the tree up on my desk.

"But I won't share my rooms with such things from a wood.

That little tree's presence I'm bound to protest."

* * *

"Mr. Holmes," tutted she, "You've grown even thinner.

Now, don't mind the tree - and eat your dinner."

* * *

"But -" I began, but had spoken too late.

She'd gone, but not before filling a plate

And leaving it pointedly where I could see,

On top of my desk, along with the tree.

* * *

But I was resolved, and did not turn a hair,

And both tree and plate I set out to ignore

By rising to move to the opposite chair,

When my progress was stalled by a rap on the door.

* * *

I schooled my expression out of it's glare

Into a respectably neutral facade

Before falling into the opposite chair.

I shouted: "Come in!" And in stepped Lestrade.

* * *

"Mr. Holmes," he began, with his hat in his hand,

And a look on his face of profound concentration,

So I sprang from my chair to usher him in,

Vigour restored by renewed expectation.

* * *

"What is it, inspector? A murder, I think?"

I asked as he sat and I poured him a drink.

* * *

But his look of surprise showed this wasn't to be.

"Not at all," he said, and: "What a very fine tree."

* * *

I could spare no remark for the thrice-blasted tree.

"Then I don't understand. What has brought you to me?"

* * *

"Well, you see," said Lestrade,

"We all exchange presents,

Down at the yard."

* * *

"Yes, that sound's rather pleasant.

But it's not a crime, is it?

So why did you visit?"

* * *

Now don't go expecting my spirits to lift,

but I wont pretend that I'd object to a gift.

Unless, I will also confess, it's a sweater.

Lestrade produced one, so the day got no better.

* * *

"My wife took up knitting this year," he declared.

I forced a grim smile. "I see I was not spared."

The front of the green sweater boasted, alas,

the design of a prominent magnifying glass.

* * *

"I'm relieved that you like it," continued Lestrade.

"Finding a gift for you is pretty hard."

* * *

"You shoudn't have," I replied, and this was true.

"It seemed time that our gift exchange should include you,"

Lestrade said with a smile. "Now I really must dash -

This one's for the doctor. The design's a mustache."

* * *

I accepted the box the inspector presented,

Wrapped up in paper depicting reindeer,

But considered how such events might be prevented,

The day before christmas the following year.

* * *

As I placed the gift under the damned little tree,

Beside the neglected and long-gone-cold plate,

I wondered who might expect presents from me,

And if I was wondering this rather too late.

* * *

In a brown study I crossed to my chair,

And sat contemplating the flames in the grate,

In the knowledge that Watson soon would be there -

He never played billiards much later than eight.

* * *

And never expected that he would recieve

Presents or gifts upon each christmas eve.

However, I felt I could quite plainly see,

There were few who deserved such a gift more than he,

And no one could be in his debt more than me.

* * *

Though many aspersions one could cast on sweaters,

It suddenly also seemed easy to see,

There was no better garment for holiday weather,

For keeping the damp and the chill from one's bones.

So, retrieving the package from under the tree,

I wrote on the wrapping: "To Watson, from Holmes."


End file.
